Mac wingate 1, p.12
Mac Wingate 1, page 12
Selima came up to Wingate and pointed to his thighs. He guessed she was trying to ask him how he had survived the journey. He had ridden horses ever since he could remember, but the camel was something else. He gave an exaggerated grimace of pain and she nodded with understanding.
The Berber and Jacobi moved forward slowly. A moment later, Wingate was able to see over the top of the rise. Less than two hundred yards ahead was a tiny oasis protected on the east by a vertical bluff of rock. There were palms and an area of grass around the little water hole. Goats and sheep were grazing. A single dun-colored cow and half a dozen camels stood in the shade of the palms. Low, black tents were pitched on the far side of the water and women in long black robes bent over cooking fires.
When they finally got to the encampment, the reception surprised Wingate. The camels got to their knees and the riders dismounted, but only the Berber gave any sign that he knew the people there. He took a couple of quick strides through the middle of one of the herds of goats, picked up a little girl who had been tending them and hugged and kissed her. Neither Selima nor Jacobi made any move toward any of the people who had come forward to see the new arrivals.
Wingate began to wonder if there was some odd convention among these desert people that prohibited any show of affection between adults. It was more than a lack of outward affection, there was almost a hostility to some of the people’s reactions—as if the sight of Selima and Jacobi aroused feelings of hatred. It seemed all the more peculiar that none of it was directed at him. He was simply being ignored.
Jacobi said quietly to Wingate, “We are a little short of time, Mr. Legrand. I think perhaps we should take a look at the materiel at once.”
Wingate said, “Is there anywhere I can get a glass of water—maybe wash this sand out of my eyes as well?”
Jacobi nodded toward the water hole. The surface was littered with dead palm fronds and less recognizable debris.
“That’s it?” asked Wingate.
“Everyone washes there,” said Jacobi.
“I figured as much,” said Wingate. “Do they drink the stuff too?”
Jacobi turned to a woman gowned from head to toe in black. Even her eyes were invisible behind the thickness of her veil. He grunted something to her. She hesitated, then fetched a goatskin container and handed it to Wingate. He put the little spout to his lips. The water was warm and brackish, tasting of rotting vegetation and aging leather. He let it run around his mouth a couple of times, but he couldn’t bring himself to swallow it. Finally he spat it out and handed the goatskin back to the woman.
Jacobi took him by the elbow and turned him toward the vertical face of the rock bluff that rose up from the far bank of the water hole. When they had walked around the last of the palm trees, Wingate saw the arched entrance to a cave in the rock. Jacobi took out a flashlight and led the way inside.
The air was cool after the growing heat of the morning outside. The feel of it on his cheeks was more refreshing than the mouthful of water had been.
They moved along a narrow passageway that led directly into the heart of the rock, Wingate walking a stride behind Jacobi. The flashlight beam lit up the red sandstone walls and the sand-covered floor. Wingate’s professional judgment began to function rapidly. If this was where they kept the stuff, just what kind of condition would it be in? He still didn’t know the type of explosive. Dynamite would deteriorate in the wrong conditions. Liquid nitro could blow the mountain apart if it wasn’t handled with kid gloves. If they were into simple blasting powder, any kind of damp would ruin it. It was too much to hope it was military stuff—some type of nitrated toluene. He would have to make do with whatever they had to offer.
There were guards blocking the passageway ahead. Two of them, sitting on upturned ammunition boxes playing cards. They got to their feet when they saw the flash of Jacobi’s light, and shaded their eyes from the flicker of the four kerosene gooseneck torches that guttered and smoked in their holders on the wall.
Jacobi called out a password. Wingate couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t in any language that was familiar to him. He took it to be some made-up arrangement of sounds that had no meaning in itself. Jacobi signaled Wingate to stay where he was, then went forward to speak to the guards alone.
It was obvious to Wingate that the guards knew Jacobi. Their manner was subservient. They seemed apologetic that Jacobi had caught them playing cards instead of paying more attention to their jobs. Wingate wondered what exactly the arrangement was between them. Jacobi had a relationship with them that would have been explained if he had been an officer commanding a military outfit and they had been lower ranks in the same outfit. Yet the two men were in Berber dress and they carried old Thompson A1 submachine guns that they had probably picked up from American dead after the November invasion.
Jacobi waved Wingate forward at last. The arrangement between Jacobi and these guys was probably the same that kept the whole world ticking—purely financial. Even so, he was left with a feeling that there was something more to it than that.
Beyond the little guard post, the tunnel opened out into a series of galleries. They lay to both sides of the main passageway, like the wine cellars of some vast chateau. Jacobi was careful to guide Wingate toward the gallery on the extreme right, as if there were things in the other galleries that he didn’t want Wingate nosing around.
The open torches that had illuminated the guarded section of the tunnel had worried Wingate when he had first seen them. They were hardly the safest way to illuminate an arms dump. But now that he inspected the shelves rising on either side of the gallery in the light of his own flashlight, he realized that he was surrounded by some of the most sophisticated explosive chemicals ever produced. A lot of it was German, packed in boxes with the familiar names of Krupp and I. G. Farben stenciled on them. But there was British, French and American equipment as well—again, most of it probably lifted from supplies that had gone astray or been stolen during the invasion.
Jacobi took out a stub of blue marking wax and handed it to Wingate. “Put a cross on anything you want,” he said quietly. “I’ll see it accompanies us back to Casa.”
Wingate wasn’t happy. It was all so goddamn rushed. “How the Christ do I know what I want unless I know the size of the target?” he snapped. He was mad that he hadn’t insisted on taking a look at the Hotel Anfa before they had set off.
Jacobi shrugged. “A meeting usually takes place in a single room,” he said, his voice sending a thin echo of sound through the gallery. “A man with your experience ...”
“Suppose we can’t get near the room? We’ve got thirty hours at the most. Suppose we need to get them in the villas?”
“I can only suggest, Mr. Legrand, that you take enough for all eventualities,” said Jacobi. “There is enough here to make a mess of half Casablanca. The Berbers can let us have whatever camels we need ...” He spoke a little wearily, as if he didn’t really see Wingate’s problem.
Wingate went along the gallery, selecting American materiel as much as he could. He had had plenty of experience with it and he knew how it behaved. If the precise stuff that he wanted didn’t exist, he took British materials. He needed Triton blocks and enough small boxes of blasting caps to detonate the TNT. He marked two galvanometers with a blue cross. There was no point in getting the whole shebang set up without testing the circuits to see if they worked.
Jacobi followed him along the gallery shelves, checking the materials that Wingate was selecting, making sure that Wingate’s blue crosses were clear enough for the Berbers to spot when they came in to load the supplies.
“Just do me a favor,” said Wingate. “Let the explosives and the blasting caps ride on different camels. I don’t want to end up as buzzard meat just because some goon can’t tell the difference between a detonator and a cigarette butt.”
Wingate selected a couple of his favorite No. 10 Hell Boxes and put a pair of British crimping pliers into his pocket. Finally he took a 200-foot coil of single leading wire and a length of safety fuse in case for some reason he couldn’t use an electric detonation circuit.
He turned to Jacobi at last and said, “I need a bag of grenades. I figure that in all this stuff—” he waved his hand along the shelving—“you can dig some out?”
Jacobi asked simply, “Why?”
There was something about the whole setup that Wingate didn’t like. He had two weapons with him—the Browning 9 millimeter and the antiquated French rifle over his shoulder. He would feel more comfortable with something that packed more clout, but he had no intention of telling Jacobi that. He said, “I’m the expert—OK? That’s why I’m here. If these guys have to be removed, I don’t want there to be any mistakes about it. The most well-planned explosion has a habit of getting fucked up. If I have to go in to fix it, I want some muscle backing me up.”
For a moment it looked as if Jacobi wasn’t going to go with Wingate’s explanation. Then finally he nodded and said, “I’ll arrange it.”
Outside, the day was already hot. The sun was high over the rocky bluff that hid the explosives dump. The big Berber had already organized a party of Arabs to go into the galleries to bring out Wingate’s requirements. Selima was sitting in the shade of one of the black tents surrounded by half a dozen women.
They went across to Selima and sat down cross-legged on a coarse area of carpet that had been laid down directly on top of the sandy rock. The women handed out little cups of thick, sweet Turkish coffee. It was bitter and the bottom half of the cup was full of coffee grounds. But it tasted good to Wingate and he nodded his thanks to the woman who had handed it to him.
She ignored him, turning out of the tent and walking across the open ground to where she was heating something in an inverted American steel helmet over a charcoal fire. He could tell from her manner that she was doing everything under protest. He wondered again just what hold Jacobi had over these people.
Finally, the two men were served Ajja, made with eggs and chopped mutton and heavily loaded with garlic cloves and ground coriander seeds. Jacobi rolled the mixture into balls with his fingers and popped them into his mouth. Wingate followed Jacobi’s example. It tasted better than he had expected. Suddenly he realized how long it was since he had eaten. Afterward another of the Berber women brought beakers of warm yogurt and a dish of goat’s cheese.
It was noon by the time the camels had been loaded.
Later in the year, travel would have been impossible because of the heat at this time of day. But in early January, the temperature was still bearable. There were no formal farewells. Even Selima ignored her own people, and they in turn seemed glad to be getting rid of her.
They mounted at last and the camels got reluctantly to their feet, lifting their heads and splaying their nostrils in protest at having to move again so soon. They rode out of the camp as they had come—the big Berber taking the lead with Jacobi and Wingate in second and third place, and Selima bringing up the rear with the string of three pack animals carrying the explosives behind her.
As they reached the top of the incline leading away from the camp, Wingate glanced back. On top of the rose-colored rock bluff that rose sheer above the encampment, there was a machine gun post. Approaching the camp from the north, it was invisible behind a rock outcrop. But from here, looking due east toward it, Wingate could make out the low wall of sandbags and the heavy water-cooled gun that nosed its way over the top. It looked like an old British Vickers and he figured that again it had been picked up by the Berbers from one of the invasion battle areas.
Then suddenly the truth of the whole situation occurred to him—the lack of hospitality, the suspicion, the grudging service of the meal. He saw what Jacobi’s hold over those desert nomads was. The gun wasn’t pointing north, covering the approach to the encampment. It was pointing directly at the encampment itself. Whoever the men were who were manning that gun, they were Jacobi’s men. The Berbers weren’t there out of choice. They were there because Jacobi was keeping them there as a convenient mask for the arms dump.
Seven
The sun was full overhead when Wingate heard the first far-off drone of the aircraft. He turned and looked east to where the distant mountains towered up toward the sky. There was nothing to be seen against the brilliant cloudless blue. The sun was high above his head, yet its brightness reflected from the endless expanse of sand with sufficient intensity to make him screw up his eyes into narrow slits.
Ahead of him, the Berber turned his head eastward and finally Jacobi followed his glance.
Jacobi turned in his saddle and called back to Wingate, “Do you hear something?”
“Aircraft,” called Wingate. “Sounds like a single plane.”
“What kind?”
“How the Christ would I know?” Wingate snapped. He was sore from the long and unusual ride and practically everything he had seen at the Berber encampment had troubled him. Something was wrong with this whole business.
“Can’t you tell from the sound of the engine?” Jacobi persisted. There was more than a touch of anxiety in his voice.
“No.” When Jacobi continued to crane his head around and show increasing worry, Wingate added, “If we’re supposed to be passing ourselves off as just another caravan coming in from the desert, the less attention we draw to ourselves the better, wouldn’t you think?”
Jacobi settled back in the saddle, but it was obvious from the occasional little movements he made with his head that he was anything but comfortable.
Wingate began to narrow down the position of the aircraft. He didn’t turn around, but he could tell by the gradually increasing sound that it was approaching them from the southeast. It wasn’t too high—maybe a couple of thousand feet. It was some single-engined machine by the sound of it and he wondered if it might ignore them, or even fail to spot them altogether.
It was then that it changed its height and direction. The pitch of the engine began to rise. The pilot had put the aircraft into a dive. At the same time it was swinging due east to get a look at them side-on. Another moment and it was in view out of the right corner of Wingate’s eyes.
“Keep moving!” Wingate yelled. “Keep your heads down—don’t give the guy a full view of your face!”
It was a Spitfire, he could tell that from the sleek outline and the single radiator air intake under the right wing. “It’s OK!” he called. “It’s one of ours!”
It meant nothing and he knew it. As far as any pilot was concerned, he was looking down at a line of guys in Arab dress carrying supplies toward Casablanca. He might have instructions to stop them. On the other hand he might simply be curious. The next couple of minutes would tell. Sure as hell, there was nothing Wingate and his companions could do about it. The desert here was flatter than a pool table. There was a ridge of higher ground to their left, but that was more than a mile away.
The aircraft passed them, headed north, then turned again. This time it was to the west of them and less than fifty feet above the ground. It flew slowly, and out of the corner of his eye Wingate could see the pilot’s face turned square on to them, inspecting every detail of the four riders and the three pack animals in the rear.
“Better give the guy a friendly wave,” Wingate called.
He put up his arm and waved and the others followed his example. At all costs they didn’t want to appear unfriendly. Wingate had no doubt that with each pass the pilot was reporting back to base by radio telephone. If he started getting suspicious, it would take only one burst from the eight Brownings he carried in his wings to finish the whole lot of them.
The aircraft made a final pass, coming right down on the deck so that he left a cloud of churned-up sand in the slipstream behind him. Finally, he seemed satisfied. He pulled back the stick and climbed steeply, waggling his wings in a gesture of greeting.
When he had disappeared to the east, Wingate called to Jacobi, “We ought to make for that ridge on the left. We’re sitting ducks on this plain. If that guy hadn’t taken a liking to us, we’d be splattered all over North Africa by now.”
Jacobi nodded and called in Arabic to the Berber in the lead. The big man altered direction northwesterly and in fifteen minutes they began to climb a narrow track up the side of the ridge.
The land was much rougher beyond the ridge, with cuttings and deep wadis running with the winter rains. In the more sheltered places, where the sun struck the land, the first of the spring flowers that would cover the desert during the next six weeks were pushing their way through the sandy surface. They would last for a month at the longest and then be burned off by the fierce sun of late March.
They crossed a wadi and let the camels take on some water, then followed the line of another ridge for some time. It bothered Wingate. He was acutely aware of just how exposed they were, breaking the skyline that way. But there was no alternative for the moment. On one side there was a sheer drop of thirty feet into a water-soaked rift, while on the other an impenetrable salt marsh had formed in a natural rock basin.
It was from the vantage point of the ridge that the big Berber saw the little cloud of blown sand in the distance. He reined in his camel and called to Jacobi. Wingate followed Jacobi forward and the three of them stood in a line looking ahead and a little to the left. Wingate shaded his eyes but he couldn’t make out any details. Something was moving a couple of miles ahead of them to the west of the ridge, but that was all he knew.
The Berber growled to Jacobi and Jacobi translated. “He says it’s some kind of truck,” said Jacobi. “Coming this way.”
“Jesus!” Wingate muttered. He was growing increasingly aware of how time was running out for him. He had the explosives, but he still had to check out the Hotel Anfa and set the stuff. He added, “I guess if we can see them, they can see us. If they have binoculars, they probably picked us up as soon as we hit the ridge.”
“Do you think the aircraft sent them?” Jacobi asked.
